P3 with persistent date display

[bruce wegmann]

The only way to know that for certain would be to tear apart a dead Sport or P4 module and look at the chip directly. So, I have just done so (a P4 Exec module). The chip markings read 5025-02, NORTEC, and "copyright 74", with a circled C to indicate the copyright. A Web search has not produced any info as to whether they were a division of Hughes, RCA, or a totally separate company. But, clearly, multiple sources were providing chips to Time Computer during its' lifetime. The other two ICs are a 6017 segment-driver chip, and a completely unmarked digit-drive chip (so their manufacturer remains unknown). I don't have any non-working Sport modules, so someone else will have to do that bit of digging.

[abem]

Bruce,

I did something similar a while back and took some photos of the Nortec chip:
viewtopic.php?f=79&t=3981&p=25216&hilit=nortec#p25216

Nortec was founded by a guy named Bob Norman after he left General Micro-electronics in the early 1970s. He also worked at Fairchild with the founders of Intel and most of the other influential semiconductor companies. Fairchild spawned so many spinoff companies that they were known as "Fairchildren". Norman was credited with inventing the idea of semiconductor memory!

-abe.

[coconutman351]

Great detective work. Now if we can only start to get an inventor of how many of these special P2 Date / P3 modules were manufactured and to see if these modules are indeed rare and perhaps worth something. I suspect TC never kept an internal inventory of the module types and revisions, that would be golden.